


The Lieutenant (Rewritten)

by Chyura



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Bad Ending, Character Death, Eveiffel, Evil!Eiffel, Groundhog Day, Minkowski Suffers, SI-5!Eiffel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 11:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25848730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyura/pseuds/Chyura
Summary: A rewrite of the story originating from the Wolf 359 discord a few years ago, in which Eiffel drops the biggest plot twist on Minkowski during the events of the season 3 finale.
Relationships: Doug Eiffel & Renée Minkowski
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	The Lieutenant (Rewritten)

_Douglas Eiffel._

Major _Douglas Eiffel._

Not Eiffel the Communications Officer, not Doug the bumbling, compassionate idiot, not Reneé Minkowski’s best friend. _Major_ Eiffel of the SI-5.

He had betrayed them.

In fact, he hadn’t just betrayed them, he had been _lying_ the whole time they were in space. Three whole years floating in a tin can, lightyears from Earth, Reneé thought she had gotten to know Eiffel in ways nobody ever could. As it turned out, that was nothing but a sham, that Hilbert wasn’t the real double agent, that Eiffel, incompetent, impatient, joyful, _harmless_ Eiffel, was their true enemy the entire time.

It all started on the day of their mutiny. It ended that day as well. The plan had already gone to shit. Kepler knew they were coming, _somehow,_ despite their precautions, and Jacobi, rather than stepping into Minkowski and Hilbert’s trap, turned and intercepted Eiffel and Lovelace to thwart their pseudo-assassination of Maxwell. And yet… Eiffel took Jacobi one-on-one. Like a trained fighter, he disarmed the demolitions expert and removed the clip from the gun.

Yet before the shock could settle in, he turned to face Lovelace, and smiled. He turned his head to the side, never breaking eye contact with her, and spoke to Jacobi, “I told you I could still beat you, Daniel.” When Jacobi stood up, Lovelace’s mind was racing too quickly to register the reply from… _Daniel._ Not Jacobi-- Daniel.

Instinct took over. She lunged for him, whoever the man was that was standing in Officer Eiffel’s place, but the shot rang out too quickly.

So much for Team-What’s-Wrong-With-Handcuffs.

* * *

Hera, poor Hera, there was nothing she could do. Why hadn’t Minkowski and Hilbert listen to her, her hysterical crying and rapid speech as she _tried_ to warn them, told them they weren’t safe. Right, because she said that they couldn’t trust Eiffel. How could they have believed that? To them, it was almost certain that Maxwell had fully taken over Hera’s programming, and was using her to turn them against each other. It was far more reasonable than imagining Doug would betray them. If only she had listened…

So they found Eiffel, and they trusted him, even with Hera’s warnings in their ears, as he lead them directly into a trap. Minkowski was far too slow to become suspicious of the fact that somehow Lovelace had been taken out and not Eiffel, the fact that he had a “backup” plan he hadn’t informed them of. By the time she registered the gun in waistband, it was already being pointed at her. It was too late. Without an explanation, she couldn’t shoot Eiffel, and her hesitation cost Reneé her life.

Or so she thought, until she woke up and it was the day of the mutiny again.

* * *

Minkowski went to the planning session, just as she was supposed to, hoped it was just an oddly lucid nightmare and chalked it up to nerves. She hoped she wasn’t having another Wednesday.

Unfortunately, she saw then what she hadn’t seen the first time; Eiffel pushing and prodding the plan to work out perfectly in his favor. He preached pacifism, not because he thought it would be wrong to kill Jacobi or Maxwell, but because he didn’t want his _true_ allies to die.

But Minkowski knew. She could stop him. She volunteered to go with him instead of Lovelace. When she later pulled her weapon on him, he just looked at her, confused. For a moment, she thought it might have all been a dream. Why would Doug ever hurt her? She was about to put the gun down and chalk it up to stress when Eiffel glanced over her shoulder at Jacobi coming down the hall, before he hit her over the head with a canister of halothane gas.

On the third day, she tried to convince Hera, but Hera was Eiffel’s friend and knew he couldn’t hurt a fly, meanwhile Minkowski is under the stress of liberating her crew and had only just found out that everyone back home thinks she’s dead. Hera no longer trusted Minkowski’s judgement, and she told the rest of the crew the same.

Nobody found Minkowski’s body in the secret room that day.

The fourth day, she tried Lovelace, only to the same results. Lovelace put her on lockdown while the plan was carried out. All Minkowski could do was listen to the chaos unfold in the distance.

Hilbert listened, ever the rationalist, and knowing from personal experience that character judgements are only so helpful. Together, the two tried to incapacitate Eiffel before the planning session, and it went well only up until the moment Jacobi walked in.

After day five, Minkowski began taking a more direct approach, but every time, she found herself unable to pull the trigger. If she knocked him out, he looked like just normal, harmless Eiffel. How could she believe that he was evil? If he was conscious, she tried to bring out that cruel, uncaring side of himself so that Reneé would _know_ her friend wasn’t in there. He would just stare at her gun with a confused and hurt expression.

Having already tried desperate pleas to the others, she resorted to bargaining, blowing up the Urania while everyone else slept, even attempted to trick Hera into killing Eiffel on accident.

On day thirteen, she got on her knees and begged, promised she was still his friend, despite his betrayal.

On day nineteen, she tried to end it all by blowing up the whole station with everyone inside: Eiffel, Kepler, and herself included.

* * *

After weeks of living the same day over and over, Reneé is tired. She is _desperate._ All she wants is for the day to end, whether Eiffel is dead at the end of it, or she is. She just wants to stop reliving the moment of betrayal when her best friend cruelly turns his back on her. Finally, she does the only thing she can think of: turning herself in. She hands in her gun to Kepler and confesses that she, Hilbert, Lovelace, and Hera were planning a mutiny. She prays he’ll spare them, but the rational part of her brain knows that they’ll all most likely die, or she’ll be locked up Hilbert and Lovelace are executed and Hera is reprogrammed; but she knows that at the end of the day she’ll just wake up again that same morning.

Except that’s not what happens. Instead of executing her for mutiny, instead of locking her up, Kepler returns to Reneé her gun.

“You’ve done the right thing, Lieutenant Minkowski. A crew member attempted mutiny and you took the appropriate steps by reporting it to your commanding officer. I am glad that your… obstinance from when we first started working together has finally seemed to wear off.” Minkowski stares in disbelief, silent. “As you have shown your loyalty, I believe I am able to trust you to use the opportunity you have to thwart them from the inside. After all, you have the best window into this operation. I think you know what to do.”

Minkowski doesn’t know which part she wanted to laugh at more: Kepler’s assumption that she doesn’t know he already has an inside man, or the assumption that she’s known what to do at any point in this godforsaken mission.

She goes to the planning session anyway. Kepler is not a dishonest man, but she knows that he doesn’t trust her or her loyalty, not yet. She hasn’t proven herself yet, he wanted her to do that by dismantling the operation she helped to establish, the one that would put _her_ back in command.

Alone with Hilbert in the engineering room, just like the first day. She knows Jacobi won’t come their way, that the plan had failed before it even began. Minkowski then does what she should’ve done when Hilbert first mutinied, over a year ago.

She shoots him in the back of the head.

* * *

Years later, Reneé looks back and wonders what her breaking point was. She concludes that it was the first time that Eiffel looked her in the eyes with the cold, hard glare of a gun. Is was a look that never could’ve belonged to Doug Eiffel, and it was the moment that made her finally go ‘ _fuck it.’_ Fuck whatever happens to her.

It took her some time to finally act on it, but it was finally letting go that broke the cycle. Letting go of her preestablished loyalties in favor of loyalty to her best friend and to the chain of command.

By the time she returned to Kepler and Eiffel after killing Hilbert, she had only the barest whisper of anger left. She wanted to kill Eiffel. She still wanted to pull her gun. She wanted to spit in his face, at the bone-chilling grin of a well trained SI-5 agent. Instead, she responded as he praised her for her good work. She called him _Major,_ as she she should, as he called her _Lieutenant._

Now, she feels very little for him. Now she’s cold, after she woke up to find that tomorrow had come, and that the same blood was still on her hands. Now, she calls Doug Colonel, and he calls Renée Lt. Major

That is the story of how Lieutenant Major Renée Minkowski became a member of the SI-5.


End file.
